Category: comics

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Comics in the Rhetoric and Composition Classroom

Every time I teach an introductory rhetoric and composition course, I struggle with what texts and assignments to do in the class. Last semester, I focused on personal memoirs, having students read Kathleen Hanna, Carrie Brownstein, Salman Rushdie, and oral interviews with individuals in Appalachia. I’ve also do Civil Rights memoirs. This semester, I’m doing comics, specifically having students look at some EC comics from the … Read More Comics in the Rhetoric and Composition Classroom

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“Life’s an exercise in making memories”: Our Sustained Existence

I first read Ram V and Filipe Andrade’s The Many Deaths of Laila Starr back in 2022, and immediately fell in love it with it. I recently picked up it back up and reread it. During this read through, I kept thinking about the ways that death impacts all of us and the ways that memory sustains us, topics I have been looking at fairly often over … Read More “Life’s an exercise in making memories”: Our Sustained Existence

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The Sickly Flavor of the Contagion Beneath Our Feet

Writing about the responses from world leaders to his stabbing in 2022, Salman Rushdie points out that while some expressed their condolences and support others rejoiced in the fact that an assailant attacked him on stage at Chautauqua. Referencing the fatwa that Ruhollah Khomeini issued on him following the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989, Rushdie points out that once “you are turned into an object of … Read More The Sickly Flavor of the Contagion Beneath Our Feet

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“Is this what you’re afraid of?”: Banned Books Comics Project

Every semester I debate what types of assignments I want to incorporate into my courses. Over the years, I have moved away from strictly written essays, choosing instead to provide students with a space to use their talents and passion in the creation of projects to convey an argument. This usually takes the form of an Unessay Project where students create anything based on … Read More “Is this what you’re afraid of?”: Banned Books Comics Project

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Using the Bible to Justify Blinding Hate in “X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills”

The connections between the Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell and Reverend William Stryker in Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson’s X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills is pretty apparent. I wrote about this in my previous post, and a few years back I pointed out how the graphic novel ties itself to the historical violence enacted against African Americans and others in the United States. Today, I … Read More Using the Bible to Justify Blinding Hate in “X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills”